


Let's play pretend; everything will be okay

by queenofthenight



Series: The Heir Presumptive [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1454443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthenight/pseuds/queenofthenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock falls ill. John entertains him by retelling the taking of Angelo's Hill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's play pretend; everything will be okay

**Author's Note:**

> I'm imagining John and Sherlock younger- John maybe in his late 20s and Sherlock in his early 20s. Obviously this is not at all canon anyway so meh.
> 
> This is set a few days after the last story, so John's been trailing about after Sherlock for a little while now.

“I’m _dying_ ,” Sherlock croaks out. “I’m dying and you still won’t let me do anything fun.”

“No, you’ve got the flu. You aren’t going to die from this,” Sir John Watson tells him impatiently from his place by the window. He’s sitting by the window because he doesn’t trust Sherlock not to jump out in a fit of pique. Sherlock’s well past the dangerous stage, and John is well aware that most of his pathetic state is just an act. He’s still unwell enough to be confined to his bed, but he’s certainly not dying. John doesn’t blame him for being bored out of his mind, though. John is just the same after a few days stuck in bed. 

Sherlock sits up impatiently and speaks normally, clearly deciding that John isn’t fooled and so it isn’t worth the effort. “What are you doing, anyway? It looks like reports, but clearly not on me, because I _haven’t been doing anything_. I am blaming you personally, you know. If you hadn’t dunked me in that trough I would probably be perfectly healthy right now.”

“Only you wouldn’t, because I pushed you aside so you wouldn’t be trodden on by that horse that was rearing about everywhere. It’s not my fault you happened to be standing next to a trough.”

“It wouldn’t have stood on me,” Sherlock mutters mutinously. “Now tell me, what kind of reports?”

Sir Watson sighs. “Military reports. I _have_ only just come back from the border, you know, and chasing about after you hasn’t given me much time to give a proper report. Mycroft thinks this is the perfect time to get it done. Mycroft clearly has no idea what a whiny little berk you are.”

Sherlock laughs, a genuine laugh with a hint of bitterness, but John somehow knows that part isn’t directed at him. He keeps speaking in the faint hope that he can perhaps entertain Sherlock for a little while. At the very least, he might learn something, which John thinks is very important when he considers that this spoiled princeling might one day be king. 

“Did you ever hear about the battle for Angelo’s Hill?” John asks.

Sherlock shakes his head. “I don’t even know where that is.”

“It’s less of a hill and more of a cliff overlooking the river. Along that part of the river, it’s the best vantage point, both for seeing who’s coming and then for picking them off with archers; there’s no crossing but the nearby ford for miles. If you somehow manage to get past, it’s a steep trek up to the top, with little to no shelter. If you somehow made it up that far, you’ve got the person holding the hill boxed in, but they’ve still got their archers there and can pick you off one by one. Moriarty’s men had taken the hill, and we’d received reports that Moriarty himself was present at the new encampment at the top. Certainly they weren’t our men up there, and that hill is technically inside our borders. We weren’t going to sit by and let them entrench themselves up there, but what could we do?”

“You could have climbed the cliff face and surprised them that way,” Sherlock suggests.

“No, the rock’s too slippery and smooth for that. Most people think that a wizard did it, long ago, because polished obsidian isn’t exactly natural for that area, especially when it’s placed to so obviously protect a single point. Not a bad idea, though.”

John expects some grumble along the lines of ‘how can I possibly be expected to give a reasonable suggestion if you don’t provide me with all the information, please try to be less useless next time’, but Sherlock just sits there quietly. John hopes he’s trying to puzzle through the battle rather than plot his imminent escape. At any rate, he doesn’t look like he’s about to jump directly out of the window, so he turns back to his reports and waits for Sherlock to say something.

After a while, Sherlock asks, “How far down the river did you say the next ford was?”

John smiles. Clever boy. “Quite far, but the other side of the bank is a lot more sheltered. You can get within a half-day’s walk of the Hill without being seen.” 

“Or a half-night, I suppose. And how loud would you say your company was?”

“Definitely loud enough to be easily heard by a sentry. Even if everybody was perfectly quiet, the full armour you’d need for a direct assault is noisy and cumbersome, but necessary because once the sun is up you’d have no cover. Before the sun is up, if a sentry heard you, he’d send men around behind you with crossbows and pick off half the company before you knew what had hit you.”

“Hmmm,” Sherlock says. 

It isn’t long before Sherlock realises that the people at the top of the hill have to get supplies from somewhere, and that whilst marching right up to the gates would be a very one-sided siege John’s company had more than enough men to hold the bottom of the hill, out of the archers’ range. Of course, they could be countered with an all-out attack, forcing John’s men to come together and thus not be able to guard all the ways past. This was a risky move, as at the bottom of the hill, John had the advantage and could wipe out most of the attacking force. This was, in fact, what had happened, which Sherlock scoffed at as an awful tactical move until John reminded him that Moriarty himself had been rumoured to be at the camp. 

“After the initial attack, and supposed escape, it was easy enough to take the camp,” John continued. “We’d wiped out most of their infantry, and the archers couldn’t exactly come out and get their arrows once they’d shot them. We made them choose between holding us off or stopping Sir Dimmock’s company crossing the river at the ford below. If they could cross, we’d have a major advantage, because we desperately needed the ambassador they were escorting to make it back to the capitol. If we could make an alliance with Queen Hudson, Moriarty would have to back off until he could judge what weak points were left. At the same time, if he could kill the ambassador, Queen Hudson would probably hold off on the alliance and we’d have lost the support we desperately need. 

“The defenders chose to try and take Dimmock’s company, hoping that they could take down the people below before we breached their defences, rightly realising that even if they took the rest of us down Dimmock would have crossed the ford and they’d be sitting ducks anyway. Much better to go for the big target. So Dimmock gets halfway across the ford and they stop pretending to be interested in us and start shooting. Dimmock goes down, the ambassador goes down, in fact most of the company is shot down. Meanwhile, my men and I have smashed down the main gate and taken the commander. The archers surrender quietly and smugly. Angelo’s Hill is ours, for all the good it will do us.”

Sherlock frowns. “But the ambassador made it safely back to the capitol about the same time as you did.”

John grins. “Did I mention that most of Dimmock’s company are minor illusionists as well as soldiers?”

The look of realisation on Sherlock’s face is priceless. 

“You didn’t really think we’d put the ambassador at risk like that to win a minor skirmish, did you?” John chides playfully. “Illusions are never perfect, of course, but at a distance, with the river bright in the sunlight and twenty or so men working to make sure each person they were impersonating fell at the right time, the defenders never knew. And if the commander had just enough time to send off a magical missive to Moriarty informing him of their success before we captured him… well, that’s hardly our fault, is it? We’d never purposely let him be misinformed, that would be very rude of us.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t any cover on the far bank. Where was the real company?”

John shrugs. “Dimmock himself is quite good with invisibility. That’s why they send him on all the diplomatic missions. Much harder to assassinate someone if you can’t see them.”

Sherlock considers this. “You’re much more intelligent than I first thought, Sir Watson.”

John rolls his eyes. “You’re allowed to call me John, you know. If nothing else, it’s much faster to yell in a crisis.”

“Do you expect we’ll be in a lot of those, then?” Sherlock asks innocently.

“With you? Oh, never. Just on the off-chance, you know, better to be safe than sorry.”

Sherlock nods gravely. “I suppose you ought to call me Sherlock, then. If nothing else, Mycroft will be appalled by the lack of formality.”

“Well, if I annoy the king enough I’m likely to get sent back to border duty, which would get me away from you, I suppose, so if that’s what you want…”

“No,” Sherlock says, surprising himself by the force with which he says it, “No, I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

John nods slowly, suddenly somber. “Alright. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” Sherlock declares. “Now tell me about another battle.”

“Oh, alright,” John says. “Which… oh, I know. So this one time Sir Stamford and I had got completely blind drunk, you know, celebrating a bit because we’d just saved a whole bunch of people and nobody else was reported to be even in the area, so we were having a bit of a laugh, see who passed out first, that kind of thing. Anyway, this messenger runs up crying to us that a small army has somehow snuck up on us on the western side, and Stamford and I are kind of just looking at each other trying not to burst out laughing even though it’s not a funny situation at all. So we go to have a look…”

Sherlock finds himself smiling as he listens to John’s outrageous story. It’s difficult for him to imagine his stocky, capable guard running about blind drunk trying to arrange everybody to hold off an unexpected army (which turned out to be the local woodland, the sentries knowing that John and Stamford were intending to drink and thinking it would be a hilarious prank to play on their superiors). He hadn’t expected John to be as capable or interesting as he turned out to be, and he hadn’t foreseen this facet of him, either. Perhaps Sherlock wasn’t quite as good at observing things as he thought he was. Perhaps he needed to stop dismissing everybody outright and actually start listening to people for a change.

No, that was never going to happen. He was sure he hadn’t been wrong, and that most people were legitimately dull. Sherlock Holmes didn’t need anybody. 

But perhaps… perhaps he’d make an exception for John.


End file.
